"If you endure any hardship long enough, you'll prosper in the end." In other words, life is too short to expect anything to go smoothly.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I so want to make an-pan from this, now.

When we last left our Daily Update Vow-breaking heroine, she was nursing a freshly wounded ego that craved bread. Pumpkin bread. Yeasted pumpkin bread. Alas, like catgut, the Hundred Years' War, and Diet Crush orange soda (which boasts about forty calories a can - you misled me, supermarket display designed to induce impulse buying!), my beautiful dough was a misnomer of epic proportions; the can may very well have contained butternut squash for its superior texture and pleasantly sweet flesh, and the yeast, well, it managed to sit unopened on the counter for the span of preparation.

I grieved my lost bread far more than I did the family's pet frog that I can't remember having. (He was with us for... years, you say? Seriously, it doesn't register.) I grieved, until I read - alert the presses! - my blog's very first comment ever.

Er. Second, that is, since a long-lost friend claimed a number one spot. So second. My blog's very second comment ever. Ever.

Signed, Jeff Hertzberg, co-writer of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Which is the book where I found the original recipe, for those keeping score.

Holy dinner rolls, Batman! That sure did the trick.

So, I present to you, for the first time ever, Amanda's Second Attempt at Pumpkin Pie Brioche: Revenge of the Leavening*.

Behold, it is oozy. Inhale, it is yeasty. Smile, all will be well.

The first time I made this, I put half of the dough in a loaf pan, let it rest, baked it, ate it with dinner. The next day, I ate it with pumpkin ice cream. Then, with apple butter. Cranberry sauce. It's not brioche, exactly (I went with canola oil, which is not only healthier than saturated-fat laden butter or highly processed margarine, but - and this is the important thing - doesn't require the additional fifteen seconds to melt it. Spend those fifteen seconds doing something for yourself, like temporarily spacing out while trying to remember why you ran upstairs this time.), but it's delicious.

The rest of the dough returned to the fridge. And Monday night, I realized, it was nearing the end of its short fuse. With a series of busy days ahead of me, I needed to do something now, which is no longer now, but it was then! I needed to do something then. Off to the kitched I trudged.

Drawing on a comment from the book's website, I rolled the rest of the dough into a thin rectangle, sprayed it with a bit of cooking spray, sprinkled it with demera sugar and cinnamon, rolled it up, plopped it in a loaf pan, huffed and grumbled as I realized I had forgotten to grease said pan, shrugged it off, and left it to rise in the fridge overnight. I then trudged back to the den and went back to knitting antique-looking slippers. (I mean that in a derogatory way.)

First thing next morning, it looked like this:

We have refrigerator rising, I repeat, we have refrigerator rising! (Hee hee. I sound like a switchboard operator. Testing, testing!) (My cat thinks I'm funny.) Bread, 1; slippers, 0. I'm back to booties for a bit.

To the oven! From the oven!Yes.Oh, yes.Aaaaaand I'm happy**.

Next time: Tummyache Day!

*Some pictures may actually be from the third bread-making effort, which currently awaits Tummyache Day in our 'fridgerator.**I didn't actually eat it, by the way. I'm told it was delicious. That's enough for now.